Social Security Pollsters

Words words

Wording has also been an obvious imperative in the Social Security debate, with “privatization” squaring off against the more benign “personal savings accounts” in the message war between the two parties. The Winston poll bears that out. While 60 percent of the respondents favor investing “part of their Social Security funds into personal retirement accounts,” 53 percent oppose “privatization of the Social Security system,” compared to the 38 percent who favor it.

That nuance suggests that the public-relations battle waged by both political parties will play a major role in the fate of Social Security reform.
But some Republicans have argued that those differences are as much a policy argument as a semantics debate. They argue that privatizing Social Security is a far greater leap than diverting a portion of payroll taxes into banks, bonds or the equity markets.

TPM is having massive posts on this including a T-shirt contest to see who can catch the most Republicans saying private then personal.